AI broke the cybersecurity world. What’s next?

In this Decoder interview, Alex Stamos, chief security officer at Cognition and a longtime cybersecurity expert, argues that AI has fundamentally broken the economics and culture of cybersecurity. Open-weight models now allow attackers to automate much of the cyber kill chain—finding bugs and writing exploits in real time—lowering the skill barrier so that even low-level actors can breach major companies. Stamos points to recent incidents like the Binance hack, the Cursor breach, and attacks using the Chinese open-source tool ARTEX as evidence that we are entering a new era reminiscent of the 1990s Wild West. He warns that the traditional multi-billion-dollar security industry, built on a hierarchy of skills and responsible disclosure norms, is overdue for disruption. Stamos predicts a "dark age" of increased breaches before defenses adapt, and calls for defenders to embrace AI-driven automation, including autonomous bug fixing and AI-assisted security operations with deterministic limits. He also suggests bold moves like rewriting the Linux kernel in Rust to eliminate entire classes of vulnerabilities, and advocates for verifying authentic content cryptographically rather than trying to detect AI-generated fakes. Ultimately, he urges the tech industry to be more proactive and less risk-averse in adopting defensive measures.

(Source：The Verge)